May 2 (Bloomberg) -- Warren Buffett, chairman and chief
executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said women need to
pursue more recognition for what they accomplish.

“They have to get like the males and claim credit for way
more than they do,” Buffett, 82, said today at the University
of Nebraska Omaha. “You can’t put limitations on yourself.”

The billionaire investor spoke to students, answering
questions from audience members and those submitted on social-media website Twitter. He cited Katharine Graham, the former
chairman and CEO of the Washington Post Co., as an example of a
“super high-grade” woman who didn’t think she deserved praise.

“Her stock went up 40-for-1 while she ran the company,
4,000 percent,” Buffett said today. “You’d think that’d make
somebody feel pretty confident about themselves. It didn’t. She
won a Pulitzer Prize for her autobiography. You think that might
make somebody pretty confident about themselves. It never got
rid of the feeling in her stomach.”

The average man would say, “You’re not giving me enough
credit,” Buffett said. “Women have to get over that.”

Graham died in 2001 at the age of 84. She won a Pulitzer in
1998 for her autobiography “Personal History,” and presided
over the newspaper’s publication of the secret Pentagon Papers
and the investigation of the Watergate scandal in the 1970s.

Today’s event was held by Fortune magazine and precedes
Berkshire’s May 4 annual shareholder meeting where Buffett will
share his views on his Omaha, Nebraska-based company.

Role Models

Buffett said he counts his first wife and Graham among his
female role models. Berkshire is Washington Post’s biggest
shareholder and Buffett is a former board member.

Berkshire shareholders are set to elect Meryl Witmer, a
general partner at Eagle Capital, as a director at the annual
meeting. Witmer would be the third woman on Berkshire’s board,
joining Charlotte Guyman and Susan Decker. Her addition would
expand the board to 13 as the panel prepares for Buffett’s
eventual departure.

“If it was a toss-up, I wanted to give it to a woman,”
Buffett said of adding a female director. “I like the idea of
women of talent becoming recognized.”

Women held just 16.6 percent of board seats and 14.3
percent of executive-officer posts at Fortune 500 companies in
2012, according to a report from Catalyst, a nonprofit group
that seeks to expand opportunities for women. They fill 51.4
percent of managerial and professional positions, yet earn 23
percent less than men on average, U.S. Census data show.

Wasting Talent

Buffett said he doesn’t dictate policies to executives of
his managed companies on topics including diversity and
flexible-work hours. Berkshire was among the lowest-rated
companies in the Standard & Poor’s 100 Index on diversity,
according to a March report by Calvert Investments Inc.

“The managers do get to run their businesses,” he said.
“I can express my views here, I can express it to them
privately, but I do give them the responsibility to run the
businesses.”

Buffett has been outspoken in support of advancing
opportunities for women. He’s said that for most of its history,
the U.S. failed to make use of women’s abilities by restricting
their career advancement.

The billionaire investor said in a May 2012 interview with
Bloomberg Television that he would allow women to join the
Augusta National Golf Club if he were in charge. Buffett is a
member of the club, which hosts the annual Masters Tournament.

Augusta announced three months later, in August 2012, its
first female members: former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice and philanthropist Darla Moore.